‘The Verger’ by W. Somerset Maugham

I came to this initially via a 1950 film compilation of three of Maugham’s short stories called Trio, starring James Hayter in the title role as the verger of St Peter’s, Neville Square, ousted because he is illiterate, but who finds (as many of us do) that redundancy is actually not always such a terrible thing.

First published in Cosmopolitans, Heinemann, 1936. Read it via the British Council here